Monday, April 16, 2012

I’ve been meaning to do this post for a while, just haven’t gotten around to it. When I was pregnant, I absolutely LOVED reading pregnant women's blogs. I loved it even more when I saw “Baby Must Haves” or “Baby Top 5” listing all the things that the author found necessary for having a little one. Me being a first time mom, I was willing to hear anything about the things I “should have” to help me prepare. So here I am now, mother to a 3 1/2 month old, and now I am making my own Baby Top 5 List. I am putting this list out there for any first time mothers, or even second or third time mothers that aren’t aware of some of these products. These are the 10 items that I/Carter can’t live without:

The Woombie

I’ve blogged about the Woombie a ton. Carter’s sleep improved drastically as soon as we put him in the woombie for the first time. I was scared because I thought it was choking him (they’re meant to be REALLY tight) but he loves it and I honestly dread the day we have to convert him out of it. There are several different versions of the woombie. You can go to their website here and go through them all. Carter had the original newborn one (5-13lbs) for about 2 1/2 months and then we moved to the convertible woombie (14-19lbs) that has buttoned sleeves so that when you’re ready to transition a baby to not be swaddled, you start by letting their hands out first, but the woombie is still tight on their body. Basically, a woombie replaces a swaddle. Babies bust out of swaddles ALL THE TIME. The velcro ones are much better, but I hated washing those because they stuck to EVERYTHING in the dryer. The woombie is the answer. It zips up and buttons at the top. Completely baby proof!

2. Video Monitor

We absolutely love our video monitor. It wasn’t the cheapest and it wasn’t the most expensive, it’s right in the middle. For anyone that plans to have their baby sleep in another room than where they will be, I suggest this. Carter’s room is upstairs so it would be a pain to trek upstairs every time I wanted to check on him. The video monitor makes it easy. We have the Summer Infant Best View monitor and we got it from our registry at BuyBuyBaby. The reason I love this monitor is because it zooms and rotates. The four buttons around the center button on the remote move the camera. This is VERY helpful when you have a mover on your hands. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve woken up in the morning and looked at the monitor and Carter wasn’t there because he had moved to the bottom of the crib directly under the monitor which blocks the view of him because of the wood on the crib. Picture below is from BBB’s website:

3. Baby Einstein DVD’s

Boy does Carter love him some Baby Einstein! These DVD’s are incredible. I don’t even know how many there are, but there’s tons. I inherited some from my sisters from when their kids watched them and I’ve bought some of the more recent ones too. Each DVD is roughly 30 minutes (newborn babies won’t be able to make it that long anyway) but on the menu, there’s a “repeat play” button that will just repeat the show over and over. This comes in handy when you need to do the laundry :) I don’t even know what all DVD’s there are, but I’ll list some of the ones I have to give you an idea:

Backyard Animals

Ocean Animals

Baby Mozart (centered around music)

Baby DaVinci (centered around art)

Around the World Music (music on each of the continents)

Baby Sign Language

I have more than that, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Along with Baby Einstein DVD’s, I’d also say Praise Baby DVD’s. It’s the same thing, but plays Christian music the whole time. Carter likes them both. See their website here. Again, BuyBuyBaby has numerous of the Baby Einstein DVD’s as does Target and Walmart.

4. Noise Machine

Boy is a noise machine a must!!! Carter is out the second he hears the rain! Rain is his personal favorite. A lot of noise machines come with various sounds. The most common I’ve seen are ocean, rain, heartbeat, waterfall and rainforest. The heartbeat one is freaky. I can’t fall asleep listening to that, I feel like a someone is going to bust up in my house and kill us all. The rain machine we have is really thin and easy to fit into the diaper bag to carry anywhere that Carter may need to fall asleep.

This is a SoundSpa Sound Machine. It’s $20 at BuyBuyBaby. You can plug it into the wall and it will go all night long, or if you only don’t have a plug near you, you can put batteries in it and by the press of a button can decide if you want it to go 15, 30 or 60 minutes. I honestly don’t know that Carter would be able to stay asleep for long without this playing in the background. We also live relatively close to a railroad and trains come through CONSTANTLY between 3-5am and he can’t hear them because of the machine.

5. Babywise

This should be number 1 on the list. Because of this book, my son slept 11 hours last night (with a 15 minute break in there where I woke him up to feed him around 10pm). This book is all about how to put your child on a schedule so that he/she will learn sleep habits. It’s based around a feed/wake/sleep schedule. Instead of feeding a baby and then putting it to sleep, which is tempting to do since after eating is when they’re the most tired, you should let your baby play and then go to sleep. Putting them to bed awake is key in getting your child to learn how to fall asleep on their own. Otherwise, you baby will always need to be fed in order to fall asleep. That’s just the main tip. There’s so many other things in this book like what a baby’s sleep habits should be at what age, how many feedings they should have, when to drop feedings, etc. LIFESAVER.

And there’s my top 5, in no particular order. I hope other will find this as helpful as I have found other people’s top 5 posts!!